The eCrozier

It is hard not to know, if you are connected to any media, that the new iPhone 5 is being released this month.  Grown adults are absolutely giddy, channeling their inner five year-old forced to sit on the top step of the staircase until their parents said they could come down to open presents on Christmas morning. Apples’ press release for the iPhone 5 refers to it as “beautiful” and “jewel-like.” Who wouldn’t want something so precious? That reminds me of a dear friend of mine who, upon getting his first iPhone years ago, referred to it as “my precious.” He was doing his own channeling, that of Tolkien’s Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, who was obsessed with The Ring.

Full disclosure here: I am writing this on a MacBook, although I am somewhat shaken by the fact that when I write “iPhone” on this page, the spellcheck on my MacBook does not recognize it as a word and suggests “siphoned” instead. It does not recognize MacBook either. It suggests “matchbook” as a better choice. Freud would have field day with both of those. So it goes. Don’t get me wrong. I like Apple products. They work well and last long, at least from my experience.

The comedian Andy Borowitz, who writes regular faux news stories for The New Yorker magazine came out recently with the following news headline: “Apple rocked the gadget world today with the news that the iPhone 5 includes a new feature that gives shape and purpose to previously empty and meaningless lives.” The reason that is funny, indeed the reason most things are funny, is that it has some truth about human beings in it. My friend, who referred to his first iPhone as “my precious,” was poking fun at himself (and by extension, others) who were developing growing, Gollum-like obsessions with it.

Apple’s marketing of the iPhone (and its other products) is clever and remarkably astute in its awareness of human behavior and psychology. Their claim is that their products are not just good, handy, and helpful, but that they will truly change your life. Wow! Apple bypasses traditional marketing that sells people on what a product is and how it works. Apple goes for the whole enchilada. They address people at their core identity claiming, as Borowitz jokes, that their iPhones provide meaning and purpose to people beyond mere functionality.

Technology, we know, is amoral. It can be used for good or for ill. But one thing technology can never do, Apple should know, is provide human beings with meaning, purpose, and identity that then infuses them with a clear destiny for their lives. Our baptismal rite frames for the candidates the truth that their sin is forgiven and that they have been “raised to the new life of grace.” Then the Holy Spirit’s sustenance is invoked: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” The rite concludes with: “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.” That is identity, purpose, and destiny. Sorry, no iPhone, or other gadget, regardless of its promises can give us that. Only God can.

+Scott